


Dust-winged Butterflies

by Solstice0612



Series: Vexing Questions [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s08e19 Moebius (1), Episode: s08e20 Moebius (2), Gen, Stargate: Continuum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 00:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2088384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solstice0612/pseuds/Solstice0612
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel ponders about time-line shifts and people vanishing into thin air.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust-winged Butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> My sincere thanks to my betas Jan Kent and Lisuni for their generous help. Disclaimer: These characters belong to MGM, I am just playing with them. Not copyright infringement intended.

 

The puppy’s short legs moved quickly over the warm sidewalk just a few yards ahead of the running girl calling the name of her wayward pet. Happy tailed, he walked under the tables of the busy outdoor café, weaving a fluid path between limbs and metal legs. The long nose briskly catalogued the fascinating smells of a ground littered with invisible crumbs. Bouncing all around like a drunken snake, the puppy’s leash caught on a cane resting against a table’s rim.

 

The handsome, spectacled man, distracted by the prodigal little dog, all jumps and kisses in the arms of the girl, never noticed his fallen cane. While observing the happy pair walk away, he put down the book he was reading. His expert fingers massaged the bridge of his nose. These new glasses needed adjustment. His whole life needed adjustment.

 

As he looked at the thick volume on the table, Daniel sighed. With equal measures of tenderness and sadness he recognized how much work his other self had put into this book. He had tried to present his provocative ideas about ancient Egypt into more acceptable arguments regarding the language used by the people who built the pyramids. If anything, he made a good point of showing how the archaeological community used labels such as “science fiction” and “amateurish” to dismiss anybody who dared to rock the boat.

 

Daniel missed the sense of acceptance that he had found at the SGC. It may have been limited, but it gave him hope that one day Earth—his world--would learn about the Stargate. Most likely, that would happen after his death. He did not mind. He had left in the hands of the-powers-that-be a number of books written to explain to the world much of what they had seen out there in the galaxy. Then his skeptical colleagues would have to come to terms with what he had so helped to initiate, a totally new way to understand humanity that went beyond Earth’s history .

 

He missed everything about his timeline: his dreams, his work, his friends. Jack. His best friend, who was no more. All of them were gone now. Nobody would ever know the price that SGC had paid to save Earth.

 

Yet, clearly, they had not done enough. They had fallen short. If only Sam and Cam, who were just as stuck as he was in this lonely reality……

 

Daniel felt the tight fist of sadness grab hold of his chest. That would not do. He could not afford to fall apart. Things were bound to change eventually. Even soon. With slow, deep breaths he steadied himself. Maybe a walk would help. His leg could use a bit more exercise.

 

He reached for his cane. It had vanished. Along with everything else, it seemed. The thought chilled him.

 

While Daniel reached under the table for the cane, a series of anxious memories intruded into his mind: Vala, suddenly missing, Teal’c vanishing like a handful of dust-winged butterflies right in front of his eyes; the whole Tok’ra capital city slowly melting into thin air in swirling waves of dusty matter.

 

What was that?

 

He needed to get over the horror of escaping a horizon collapsing into floating particles and slowly think through what he had seen; calmly, methodically, without lingering on the emotional toll.

 

All Daniel knew for sure is that the Stargate had delivered them into a quite different timeline. Sam had strenuously argued that somebody, Ba’al most likely, had gone back into the past to drastically change the present. These were the kind of bad news that messed up things on a galactic scale. Life on Earth was scheduled for a massive downgrade.

 

Of course, all their warnings fell in deaf ears. The brass flatly dismissed their calls for immediate action in order to save the only Earth--that SG1 knew--which had been able to survive and even thrive in a universe full of hidden dangers. These innocent folks, who had listened to their endlessly repeated stories, held on to the belief that they all would be ok.

 

Give up your arrogant assumptions, they said. Trust us.

 

Daniel knew better. Ignorance is seldom bliss. The story of his life.

 

Lives.  

 

The haunting image of delicate wings vanishing into evanescent particles remained in Daniel’s mind while he slowly walked the streets, enjoying the warm sunny afternoon before hiding in his lonely apartment. As he made progress, block after block, his keen mind continued to work.

 

Did matter scatter as dusty whirlwinds when it was no longer relevant, when it could no longer be held in place by a shifting timeline? Daniel had seen this happen right in front on his eyes.

 

Would that also happen when a time-loop was completed, resolving all possible paradoxes?

 

Daniel had some limited experience with time travel. Things had worked out ok after SG1’s regressive trip to 1969. They had even avoided a potentially fatal threat by the rather mysterious warning against the Aschen that one day came bouncing through the Stargate. But he was still mulling in his mind the paradoxes surrounding the ZPM and SG1’s video recording discovered along with other antiquities in a dig in Egypt.

 

The box--quickly classified as a top-secret and delivered directly to the SGC--had everything they wanted, except for the one thing he personally expected to find among its contents: a message to himself with directions to a large cache of written texts.

 

After much speculation, the members of SG-1 had reached the conclusion that they had played a role in the uprising against Ra. Daniel was sure of something else. He would have written dozens of clay tablets in all the years they must have spent back there, preparing an effective slave rebellion against one the most powerful beings in the galaxy. His instinct told him that they had survived at least long enough to see the Stargate buried, because who else would have known about the dangers this portal posed to humans barely coming out of the Stone Age?

 

Most likely, the SG1 members had overseen the preparation of the Gate’s cover stone, with Daniel writing a text on its surface that would make perfect sense to his younger self. He had done an excellent job. Most had missed the full meaning of the words but it had taken him only two weeks to figure it out. Clever boy.

 

Yet, something was still missing.

 

Where were the clay tablets, the primitive version of his private journal, telling his future self about ancient Egyptian life? He could not understand why there was no letter to himself within or near the box naming the location of his clay tablets. He had looked everywhere, for years.

 

Discouraged, he had discussed his concerns with Sam. She had argued that, as long as he read any tablets he had written after the time-loop had closed, there would be no paradox since the information was traveling along the natural flow of time.

 

After what he had seen on the vanishing Tok’ra home world, Daniel came to the conclusion that soon after the Gate was buried, once the time loop was corrected or closed--he could not be certain of what had happened back then--either SG-1 had died or they had become a swirl of disappearing particles before he had a chance to set in place his hypothetical journals.

 

Had SG-1 continued to exist on the face of his Earth, things would have changed too much. Their time capsule would not have been able to arrive at the exact moment when they were considering a time-travel mission to find a ZPM. Somehow they had managed to close the temporal loop with clock-work precision.

 

Daniel somehow knew. The only butterfly effect would have been SG-1, vanishing into dust….. Their work was done. They did not belong back there….

 

But what about this inhospitable timeline that wrapped around him like an ill-fitting suit? Would he disappear in a flutter of powdery wings once this time loop curled upon itself?

 

Perhaps he would be dead by then.

 

Somehow SG-1 would manage to save their Earth, they always did. This time, however, there might be two of him to pay the price.

 

Yet, he hoped that the universe would be kind and lead him to find himself at the right time.

 

The End

 

 


End file.
